Third Europe trip part 5 - Brussels

Brussels trip was more like a filler stop, as we planned to take EuroStar to London. I thought there is only one airport in Brussels, however we landed in another airport which, I believe is in the outskirts and took us almost an hour bus ride to the city. There are buses to both Bruges and Brussels from the airport and we learnt that it would take the same time to reach both places.Had we known before, we would have planned to go to Bruges 😔.
It was past 11 a.m by the time we reached our hotel. My card, which stopped working for online transactions in Milan, stopped working in swipe machines in Brussels - fortunately it worked​ till we paid the hotel bill at check-in.
We planned to take 24 hour open top bus at around 3 p.m which would be ideal as our train is at 5:30 p.m next day. But with 10 € + 20 £ left in the wallet, we had to scrape that plan😞. After getting some food from super market and relaxing for a bit, we walked for 15 mins to train station in the evening where the nearest ATM is located 😕. Luckily the card worked in the machine and, with a sigh of relief, I started noticing the surroundings.
Someone rightly defined the place as eccentric. With walls full of graffiti, buildings painted in comic strips and climate unpredictable, what seemed like a gloomy city turned out to be totally different.


We had dinner and returned to hotel leaving the visit to Grand place to next morning thinking, like rest of Europe, it would be closed by sunset.
After breakfast next morning, we checked out, placed the bags in hotel locker and headed to Grand place. In 1 km walk, the weather changed from cold to warm and warm to rainy🙃.

We went on the final day of 3-day summer festival. While the arrangements were in progress, we had lunch at famous restaurant-Maison Dandoy.
Later, we walked through the narrow roads lined with stores selling souvenirs, waffles, chocolates and beer to manikin pis.


The famous tiny peeing boy probably have more ​outfits any famous fashionista 😍 - we saw him in 2 different appearances in span of 2-3 hours.

Right opposite the statue is my favorite Godiva store and I got chocolate covered strawberries.

The lovely lady in the store strongly recommended immediate consumption. However, after heavy lunch I couldn't eat them and had them 4-5 hours later and some of them got mushy😞. She also told me the way to atomium which is about 7km away. Even though the bus stop is nearby, we have to go out of way to get the tickets and we returned to Grand place.
By then, the festivities were in full swing.
We then went around the place for a while.

After getting souvenirs and chocolates we started back to the hotel.
There were quite a few processions on the way back and we had a very good time which we didn't expect at all, especially since the day before was a total bum. As it turned out, in the entire trip, we were most active and had most fun on that day.
Buggy:

Procession to promote sports for children:

There stopped by a building to take a break and there was a sale of vintage items - clothing, shoes, house decorations etc., It seemed thrifty but they are not at all inexpensive 😶.

We returned to the hotel to collect our luggage and the receptionist changed at the counter. The previous one didn't have much information but this gentleman had lots of suggestions, only it was too late. He told us that we should have visited Grand place the previous evening as the festival is best at night and visit to atomium is worth the effort we avoided😑.

Anyway, we said goodbye and started to the station.

The hotel from front:

We reached the station with good amount of buffer time and the station have quite a few stores to explore, not to mention the comic strips from Tin-Tin on the walls which evoked some childhood memories. I had no idea that Tin-Tin is Belgian 😯.

I got a miniature Tin-Tin from gift store before boarding (paid about 7£ for 5.5€ toy 😒) the train.
Couple of hours of train ride (through the water 😁), we reached King's cross St. Pancreas station.


Platform 9 3/4 from Harry Potter is 2 stairs above us, but my sister is extremely tired (I never thought she would say no to anything Harry Potter in any condition 😮), so that was left for another day.
Lessons learnt:
First and most important: inform the bank before travelling - we were extremely lucky that the card worked almost till the end, couldn't imagine how we would have handled had it stopped working in the beginning.
Carry local currency, in buffer: card payment is easy and at times economical, but many stores accept only cash and, even though pounds are accepted, they will be calculated as Euros/Francs. Leftover currency could always be converted or save for later trips🤗.
Check the location of airport: we didn't do anything on the first day in Brussels and could have easily been to Bruges from the airport. An early morning ride to Brussels still would have allowed us to go the places we did visit.
Carry suitable bags: many focus on clothes and shoes and completely ignore the bag. I got my back pack but my sister only had a hand baggage with single shoulder strap which was very inconvenient to carry around. Many times, we came across places of interest near to the station or on the way, but we couldn't consider them as we are rushing to hotel to place our bags. A trolley would be super beneficial in such situations. Moreover, in Europe, public transport highly preferred mode of commute and walking is also highly suggested for shorter distances - in Italy, when we ask for directions, they gave walking route and extremely reluctant to suggest other modes of transportation (even Google maps strongly suggest walking and so would I 😋). A comfortable back pack or, even better, a trolley is a must.